Spotlight: First Aid: Part 1 (Fusillade)
2k5 - Monday, February 25, 2013, 7:49 PM ---------------------------------------- Graveyard What first seems like piles and piles and piles of more debris becomes, on closer examination, dead turbo-rats, foxes, wolves, plus many that haven't been seen on Cybertron for millennia: fierce turbo-hawks, insatiable turbo-shrews, even a goodly number of Transorganics. All these creatures are long dead, their still bodies silent testimony to slow starvation. Why they came here to die is unknown. Perhaps, like lemmings, they all suddenly decided to commit mass suicide. Surprisingly few of the bodies have been disturbed by living predators; most still lie untouched as they have for ages, their darkened optics still glinting with reflected starlight. Contents: Fusillade Obvious exits: Fly leads to Sky above Graveyard. East leads to Ruined Estates. West leads to Petrified Forest. Thick black smoke pours from the Honesty's blown out starboard engine as it careens low across the graveyard. The single remaining engine struggles to maintain the thrust needed to keep the ship in the air, compensating for its destroyed brother. Below, the corpses of turbo-rats, foxes, and other creatures sway from the passing vessel. In the cockpit, a pair of Autobot pilots are working their hearts out to fly the nearly dead shuttle. Suddenly a pair of white hands squeeze in between the rear doors, forcing them open. First Aid stumbles awkwardly, forced to grab a handhold as the ship almost shakes itself apart. "What in the world was /that/?" He calls out. "Long ranged proton missile, doc," Ace replies, keeping remarkably calm despite the crisis. She reaches up and flicks several emergency switches above the dashboard. "They got us when we went around for the second pass." First Aid glances at the diagnostics monitor before settling in at the console. There are patients back in the hold, but given the number of subsystems listed in bright flashing red Cybertronix, First Aid somehow thinks being here has priority. This was such a terrible idea, he thinks. After achieving a direct hit on the outer Decepticon outpost, First Aid was certain it'd be pushing their luck to try the same on the more heavily defended secondary line. No sense berating the point now, though. "We're losing fuel. I'm going to reroute what's remaining in the starboard engine to port. It should give us an extra mechanoklik." "Super," Ace says through gritted teeth, gripping the controls as hard as she can. "An extra mechanoklik... At least tell me the scopes are clear. We didn't pick up a tail, right?" The scopes are most definitely not clear. It's hard to say whether they picked up a tail, or if it had been with them the entire time -- proton missiles have impressive range, and considering the airframe that soon begins to fill the visual readout, it very well could have come from the aerospace terror closing in them. A fierce laugh rings out on local broadband, <> The barrage of verbal abuse is matched with considerable weaponsfire, of course. Lots of lasers for now, but it is simply a matter of when, not if, for more vicious firepower. Ace's copilot glances at the scope. The console keeps bursting in and out of snow static. "Not sure, we keep /losing power to the radar for some reason/." Deft shoots an annoyed look over his shoulder at First Aid, who keeps working as best he can. Then comes the sudden horrible voice breaking through over broadband. Deft's face twists into an angry scowl, but Ace's remains hardened and stern. First Aid just focuses on his work. As the shuttle is raked by laserfire, but the ship's heavy armour keeps most of it out. With so much of the ship being dead weight, what counts as 'armour' keeps going up. "How about our own comms?" Ace asks. Deft just shakes his head. "The entire sector is jammed." "That's too bad. I was hoping to tell her where she could shove our 'cruddy shuttle'. Alright, psycho bitch out there is a bomber, so we're going to take this bad boy up a few notches. We stay low to the ground, she can use those bombs of hers, so lets gain altitude. First Aid?" The Protectobot nods in understanding, sending a surge of energon through to the starboard engine. Against all odds, the Honesty starts angling upwards, lumbering higher into the air. The turbo-animal corpses won't be disturbed anymore, at least. The lack of response from the shuttle, inadvertant as it may be, angers Fusillade. Ignoring the skirmish unfolding elsewhere on Cybertron, she continues to dog out the Autobot craft, despite its relative dumpiness. <> The struggling shuttle finally gives her something to chew on, though, as it lumbers upward, nearly blundering into her. <> The bomber then promptly disgorges a missile outfitted with its own engine and flight surfaces, which nimbly darts and twists upon its flight track to home in on the poor shuttles' bulk, demonstrating the difference between the B-1B and the B-1R. Deft doesn't even turn to look at Ace as Fusillade berates her for her flying and a lack of responses. He knows that smoke is going to start appearing over the pilot's head. Despite her CPU starting to overheat, she sounds like the bastion of calmness as she grabs the intercom mic with one hand while keeping her other on the flight controls. "This is your Captain speaking. If you look out the port window you'll see psycho bitch complaining we aren't giving her a proper response. As the comms are down, please feel free to give her my regards." "Missile!" Deft suddenly shouts. "Flares," Ace replies quickly. "Just two." "Do it." The Honesty, climbing awkwardly as First Aid tries to make sure the ship doesn't explode in mid-air, suddenly fires a pair of bright red flashes from its rear section. Fusillade's missile slips past the first, but then locks onto the second. Just before impact, Ace turns the shuttle hard towards starboard. The explosion as the missile and flare collide slams into the Honesty, but with the starboard side already useless, its one remaining engine is completely unharmed. On the top of the shuttle, someone punches through an entry hatch that had been stuck. A green minibot with a chaingun that dwarfs himself pops up. Bracing himself against the side of the hatch, he cuts loose against the Decepticon, spraying over eighty bullets per astro-second. "GRAAAAAARGH!" he screams, teeth chattering from the shaking of his own weapon. He wants to make sure he can be heard over the port engine's roar. The flares work, earning an audible <> from their assailant. The staccato, almost flatulent report of the chainguns clatters back into the shuttle, the rounds stitching into her left wing. The bomber flares her thrust-vectoring exhausts, and lurches higher, almost out of sight. The relief is almost palpable. It is, sadly, also short-lived. The bomber shrieks down out of the sky, heading toward the shuttle from its twelve o'clock position, <> No less than twelve dumb bombs, guided by nothing more than the spacejet's inertia and Cybertron's gravity, arc toward Ace's viewport. "Listen," Ace says in an even tone, still staring straight ahead as the Graveyard zooms past them. "It's only a matter of time before psycho bitch stops toying with us and lowers the boom, and even if by some miracle we fight her off, First Aid says we don't have the fuel to get to the Autobot lines. We'll put 'er down in a controlled crash and make it the rest of the way on foot." "'Controlled crash'?!" Deft exclaims, knowing what that really means. Before he can get a response, though, the proximity alarm suddenly starts screaming. "Eigh-- no, twelve bombs coming down on us!" Ace quickly checks the radar and knows they can't get out of the way in time. "Alright, I'm bringing 'er down." The Honesty, still spewing black smoke everywhere, plunges back down towards Cybertron's surface. The bombs strike one after the other, shattering the rear section of the ship. The plucky minibot with the chaingnu loses his grip on his weapon, and then the ship as a whole before being knocked out entirely. Huge metal plates fly off before the one good engine finally gives way, sending the shuttle into free fall. First Aid's optics wide, holds on as tight as he can. It feels like the ship is being torn apart by a vengeful monster. Staring out the view screen, he can see Cybertron turn upside down, right-side up and back again. The ground rushes up, and suddenly everything goes black as the ship belly flops onto the ground, breaking into hundreds of pieces that all fly forward, each sending piles of dead turbo-animals flying in all directions. The debris field covers well over several miles. <> Fusillade yawps as she cruises past, wings swept and nearly inverted. She rocks wings, and then rockets off for any other unfortunates that may be in the sky or easily visible on the ground. Not the trophy-taking type.